"Nuts are fresh tokens of primeval existence,"
explains The Nut Lady. "I mentioned that on my second appearance on David
Letterman." Hidden behind a mask depicting the prickly burr of the sweet
chestnut, she launches into an a cappella verse from her self-penned "Nut
Anthem":

"Oh nutttts, have a bee-you-tee-ful his-tory
and lorrrre...."

The Nut Lady is Elizabeth Tashjian, an artist who has championed the aesthetic
causes of Nutdom since 1973. Her antebellum mansion and tree-shrouded property
comprise The Nut Museum, an environmental gallery of nut expression. "I'm
trying to take the demerit marks off nuts with the power of art," she
explains.

Nuts are everywhere, as are nutcrackers, nut sheet music, nut paintings,
and the World's Largest Nut, a 35-pound cocoa-de-mer from the Seychelles Islands.

The
outdoor aluminum sculptures that were so much a part of the Nut Museum experience
in the late seventies and eighties have been destroyed by vandals, and the
museum is under occasional seige
by various forces.

The Nut Lady points to a painting of nutcrackers and nuts floating in
what looks to be amniotic fluid. "In the outside world, nutcrackers are
the nuts' mortal enemy," she explains. "Here, nuts and nutcrackers
can be friends." .

The Nut Museum is only the first of what Ms. Tashjian sees as an expanding
series of shrines to her favorite seed. She fitfully dreams of a 32-acre nut
theme park overlooking Long Island Sound; a pier and line of shops would form
a giant nutcracker, its hinge would be the "Nutcracker Suite" restaurant.

Ms. Tashjian dons the "Mask of the Unknown Nut" and peeks playfully
through its eye holes, waving good-bye with an indelible image to match her
philosophy. [excerpted from New
Roadside America]